I'm not trying to be something that I'm not. I'm just trying to be myself and talk about what I know, and admit what I don't know.

Just to be clear, if, like Pat Robertson, you somehow missed all the evidence, all the research, the depth and breadth of all the knowledge garnered about HIV and AIDS over the past three decades, you cannot get HIV if you share towels.

I graduated in 1989, and I'd focused almost entirely on the Soviet Union and communism ... so when the Berlin wall fell, I was, well, I was screwed.

I'm always uncomfortable with that notion of setting people up in order to kind of promote, you know, some sort of a face-off.

Anytime you stop and talk to somebody and you learn about them, you start to walk in their shoes a little bit and you see things through a different lens.

I think you have to be yourself, and you have to be real and you have to admit what you don't know, and talk about what you do know, and talk about what you don't know as long as you say you don't know it.

I think if you've suffered, if you've experienced loss, you're probably more open to understanding it and more comfortable talking about it and experiencing it.